MOSCOW, November 12. /TASS/. The violence, which occurred amid celebrations of Poland's Independence Day, as nationalists clashed with police, proves the danger of tolerating extremism, Russia’s human rights ombudsman Konstantin Dolgov said on Wednesday.
“Bacchanalia of nationalist radicals in Warsaw confirms the danger of connivance to extremists spreading racial hatred, including in Ukraine,” Dolgov wrote in his Twitter microblog.
Over 70 people, including 51 police, were injured in the clashes that broke out on Tuesday in Poland’s capital Warsaw during a march organized by nationalists, according to local police.
Poland’s police said 30,000 people participated in the event, while organizers said some 100,000 demonstrators took to the streets. Some 276 activists were later arrested.
The groups of masked hooligans hurled stones and Molotov cocktails at police officers, who were forced to use water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets against them.
“We did not allow the escalation of the conflicts that erupted and attacks on ordinary participants of the manifestations,” the chief commandant of Polish police, Marek Dzialoszynski, said.
The Warsaw administration said the city infrastructure has sustained damage. No major incidents were reported during the celebrations in other Polish cities. In total, 634 mass events were held across the country.
Russia strongly condemned neo-Nazi parades through Ukraine’s capital and other cities in mid-October and called on the international community to unite efforts to decisively counteract the heroization of Nazism and the manifestations of racism and aggressive nationalism.